Dear colleagues,
I am back and try to keep up with piles of mail. And re-reading
Leontiev in the English version over the Leontjew of the German
version of 1982 I've studied years ago. I defer my points to chapter
1 and describe my difficulties with key concepts of ch. 2 such as
reflection, objective, subjective, as well as of more procedural
conceptions such as "existing, objective reality", "the
non-convergence of the psychic and the physiological", "the
cybernetic approach to psychic activity" etc.
Charles Nelson has very pertinently pointed out the risk of "harmony
of illusions" in the most nicely put words of Ludwik Fleck of 1935.
Before I come to "reflection" I respond firstly to Paul Dillon's
elucidations (separate post to come) and Andy Blunden's refutation:
>No, Charles I don't believe this is the case.
>A "harmony of illusions" implies comparison of the world as
>perceived in a given society with a world-in-itself, a comparison
>which is entirely abstract.
>Human activity (labour, practice), and sensuousness as well, is
>objective activity, i.e. activity *in the world*, and therefore
>partakes of the objective. It's subjectiveness is not something
>illusory, but insofar as it is "normal", is part of the social
>practice of a really living, material culture, i.e., objective.
I cannot see how collective illusion implies comparison between the
perceived world and a world-in-itself. All that is needed is a
comparison, or, even simpler, an assimilation of at least two verbal
constructions of a world supposedly, but not factually existing
independent of one's construction, one of them the believer's own.
For how should it be possible to compare, which implies perceive,
cognize etc., a world-in-itself independent of ones means of
perceiving, feeling, cognizing, valuing etc.? Or what could mean here
"entirely abstract"? Obviously such comparison is on the level of
symbols which by definition have no direct connection to what they
are supposed to refer to but depend entirely upon convention or
agreement about how to use these symbols among those using them. For
a world-in-itself can only enter a human mind or a communicative
system on symbol level while a perceived world hopefully retains at
least some iconic and indexical in addition to the symbols used in a
brain-mind to recognize, to memorize, and to actualize it.
And human activity, indeed, is in some aspects and degrees
"objective" if this means it to be accessible to other observer's
observation and understanding. But as soon as an activity is
perceived by somebody it's not longer the activity itself, but the
perceived activity - witness that it can and usually is perceived and
understood differently by different people, whether those
participating or third parties who are at pains to reconstruct it. To
reconstruct what they need to understand for their purpose which
usually is neither subjective nor objective. Or would anybody claim
the judgment of a justice or a jury to be "objective" or
"subjective". It must be hoped taht it is neither of the two; for
otherwise poor victim!, whether coldly objectivied or teared into
pieces between various subjectivities. Or would anybody claim some
scientific endeavor or some artistic project being capable to
reconstruct the "real" activity? If the former were true we were
living in an Orwellian world and the very fact and necessity of
rewriting history would deny the possibility; if the latter pertained
it would be hell to live.
No, concepts like "objective" or "subjective" are two very narrow and
polar limits, outside the real, approaching abstractions from the
concrete real in view of two equally legitimate as unattainable
ideals, the former that the world be finite and clear, the latter
that one's own perspective is the only valuable. Flecks "harmony"
simply points out that it is common but nevertheless misleading to
accept some convergence of a smaller or larger number of
"subjectivities" for "objective".
Andy's addition:
>Charles, if we accept that differing views (in so far as they are
>valid) arise from differing positions in the network of social
>relations, then objectivity is the undeniable fact that *all* people
>live in a common material world, and most particularly and
>importantly, in this day and age, that we live and work within a
>global division of labour and global market and earn a living in
>currency the exchange rates for which are tested on a
>minute-by-minute basis.
>
>The content of our differing views therefore is objectively
>contained in the material impact that our practice has on one
>another via this actual, material web of social relations.
does not help. For "the network of social relations" is only one of
several conditions of differing views and "the undeniable fact that
*all* people live in a common material world" is exactly another
condition of differing views because no two people can make exactly
the same experiences through their lifetime in the same material or
in a common social and cultural world. They cannot avoid becoming
involved in different selections of interactional settings and so
develop their different transactional history. Even of genuine twins
each has one's different twin brother or sister for two different
personal evolution. The more global you understand the interactional
setting the more selective everybody must interact for the sheer
amount of open possibilities. Culturality, of all different group
sizes, has emerged exactly because of increasing variety of
encounters; so different cultures are the only means of keeping large
variety managable. That is exactly not "objectivity" but a mixture of
more or less compatible "subjectivities" of some degree of
relatedness, whether benevolent or malevolent. To call the result of
any set of related transactional effects "objective" implying general
and overall validity is exactly what Fleck had in mind with his
notion of the "harmony of illusions". It pertains to large portions
of modern science. In my preferred term: it's mostly nominal only and
has mostly given up checks and emendations through encounter with
something that is real in the simple sense that it can have its
effects without interference of anybody's, especially one's own
conception of it. Research in the social sciences as well as in some
parts of natural science is of that conception dependent nature in
that their experiments are largely determined by the very concepts
and theories they are invented to "(dis)prove". This is "fully circle
science".
Alfred
Separate mail on "psychic reflection"
-- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Alfred Lang, Psychology, Univ. Bern, Switzerland --- alfred.lang@psy.unibe.ch Website: http://www.psy.unibe.ch/ukp/langpapers/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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